Information about open textbooks is available from: UC Irvine OpenCourseWare North Carolina State University Duke ICT Blog Open Textbooks followup – Where to find good ones? K12 OpenEd Blog 

Teaching online is a specialized craft that goes above and beyond imparting the knowledge of a subject or academic discipline.  Successful online instructors create a supportive learning environment that includes opportunities to communicate and interact with each student and encourages students to be active learners.  To recognize the achievement of online faculty who have demonstrated [...]

Announcing 3IDeas from SDCCD Online Learning Pathways!  The 3IDeas program is a way that you – our SDCCD online and web-enhanced faculty members – can request Instructional Design assistance with your Blackboard Vista course shell.  Maybe you want to redesign an assignment in your course?   Or perhaps you’d like to incorporate more multimedia into your course [...]

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity by Lawrence  Lessig is available for free download and use under a Creative Commons license at http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/.  Watch TEDxNYED livestreaming now at http://tedxnyed.com/.

Become an Advocate/Trainer for Open Textbooks and earn a $1500 stipend for giving a workshop on your campus. March 8 noon to 1:30 PM, March 10 noon to 2 PM, March 11 noon to 2 PM, March 18 noon to 1 PM. All times are Pacific Standard Time.  For community college educators only. To Register for the train the [...]

The National Association of College Stores is experimenting with distributing open textbooks via epub.  Their pilot digital delivery program is operational at approximately 60 colleges and universities including Anne Arundel Community College Bookstore.   CampusEBookstore.com offers over 200 literature titles as free open licensed content that are digitally enhanced using the epub format and can be read using PC and MAC [...]

Register now for a free online course at P2P University on Copyright for Educators. Learn about copyright, open content material and licensing.  The course is taught around practical case studies faced by teachers when using copyright material in their day to day teaching and educational instruction. By answering the case scenarios and drafting and discussing the answers in [...]

California State University recently launched its Affordable Learning Solutions Campaign to assist faculty with use of quality educational content that is more affordable for their students.   The Affordable Learning Solutions website provides information about: Free course content Free textbooks Lower cost textbooks Library resources Authoring content Accessibility Sharing practices for using no/low cost digital content in CSU courses Recognizing faculty for their efforts in reducing costs for students If you [...]

EdTechPost wants to know: What is Your Favorite Open Textbook Example?  Submit your choice today!

In his January 2010 paper titled “Using Free and Open Online Resources: Licensing and Collections“ Norm Friesen lists Connexions as one of the highest rated OER repositories.    His paper provides an “overview of the open or free resources and materials available from online collections and providers that may be of significant strategic value to schools, universities and to [...]

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) seeks ”to identify and acquire state-developed/state owned open-source textbooks that are available for downloading from the internet at no charge to a student and without requiring the purchase of an unlock code, membership, or other access or use charge, except for a charge to order an optional printed copy of all or [...]

One of five pilot projects implemented at the University of Malawi and University of Botswana last year was designed to create a textbook from freely available open educational resources (OER) that would cover at most of a 1st semester Communication Skills course. Evaluation of findings and lessons learned from the pilot are available at OER [...]

The Connexions Project has added a new item titled: “Authoring Connexions Modules using Microsoft Word Documents” to its Connexions Documentation lens at: http://cnx.org/lenses/cnxorg/documentation This training collection was written by Connexions Featured Author, winner in the HPC Cup for High Performance Computing education, and Houston Community College faculty member, Kenneth Leroy Busbee. It is designed for new [...]

Announcing 3IDeas from SDCCD Online Learning Pathways!

 The 3IDeas program is a way that you – our SDCCD online and web-enhanced faculty members – can request Instructional Design assistance with your Blackboard Vista course shell.  Maybe you want to redesign an assignment in your course?   Or perhaps you’d like to incorporate more multimedia into your course content?  Or maybe you’re just looking for some fresh ideas?  That’s what 3IDeas is all about.  After filling out a simple sign up form, an Instructional Design Coordinator from SDCCD Online Learning Pathways will take a look at your course shell and contact you with three suggestions for your course. 

3IDeas is up and running now!  Benay Berl, CBTE instructor from City College, said “I am very excited

...... [ Read the rest of this story ]

Okay. By now you’ve heard of Twitter, right?   It’s a micro-blogging platform that lets you share short messages with other Twitter users.  Yes, I admit – I wasn’t too thrilled with it at first.  But in the past few months I’ve started to login more and more.  What do I like about it?  Twitter gives me direct access to professionals in my field.  I get short bits of information (140 characters or less) from the people who I’ve chosen to follow.  Then when I send out my messages, or “tweets”, my followers receive those messages.   It’s a quick and easy way to share ideas, tools, web pages, and opinions.  Students might use Twitter to collect resources, gather opinions, communicate with classmates, or network with professionals in their field of study.

Interested in

...... [ Read the rest of this story ]

The Mobile Multimedia Studio (MMS) is a set of equipment for Career Technical online faculty to use to develop accessible multimedia for their online courses. As the name suggests, the equipment is mobile – it all fits in a roller laptop bag that you can take to your home or office.

What’s in the MMS? The MMS includes the following equipment and software:

• Toshiba Tablet PC with webcam
• Wireless Headset with Microphone & Foot Pedal
• Camtasia Studio 6 Screen Recorder Software
• Adobe Creative Suite 4 – Production Premium Software

...... [ Read the rest of this story ]

Hi All,

We’d like your help with a vital decision that the District will soon have to make:

Background:  Our Blackboard Vista 8 system will be supported by Blackboard until Fall 2012.  If we stay with Blackboard, we will need to migrate to Blackboard Learn 9.1 or 9.2, or whatever 9+ version they are on when we are ready.  The migration will involve some re-training and movement of courses to the new platform. 

Question:  Should we stay on the Blackboard path or find another system to deliver our online and web-enhanced courses?  To answer this question, the online faculty are invited to participate in a s

...... [ Read the rest of this story ]

 

Hi All,

 We’re ready to enter the second decade of the 21st century here at SDCCD Online Learning Pathways, and one of the first ideas we had to this effect was to replace our Ed Tech Innovations Newsletter with a spiffy, Web 2.0, social-learning enabled, read/write web Blog (did I miss any buzzwords?).  This will allow us to publish useful new information all the time, rather than once a semester or so.   Also, you’ll be able to comment on postings, adding a new level of interactivity and additional valuable information to the process.  Andrea, Katie, Paula, and I will try to make checking the blog regularly worthwhile.   Hope to hear from you frequently!

Dave

...... [ Read the rest of this story ]

Register with @ONE to view a free webinar on “Creative Commons Licensing and Open Educational Resources” with Jane Park Wed, 03/24/2010 – 12:00pm – 1:00pm (Pacific Time).  The webinar will address: “What is Creative Commons? How did it originate? And how did it become part and parcel of worldwide movements towards open education, open scientific practices, [...]

During the fall of 2009, Etudes, Inc. devoted extensive developer resources to provide greater accessibility support throughout its course management system, Etudes.  Etudes is a customized version of Sakai which is an open source course management system used worldwide. The new accessibility enhancements were released in Etudes this week.   The adjustments and new access keys support include:  1) Elimination [...]